Each Asian font is a collection of characters, representing words or concepts, which include brush strokes and glyphs designed in a particular style. An entire set of Asian characters in a particular font requires a large amount of disk storage space since a single Asian font, unlike Roman-based languages, may contain more than 13,000 characters. Since most personal computers do not have sufficient storage space to store all Asian characters of a particular font, only a portion of the Asian font data (i.e., Asian characters) is stored, and the remaining portion of the Asian font data must be stored on an alternative or auxiliary storage device that is coupled via a network. Further, some rarely used Asian characters may be not stored even on an alternative or auxiliary storage device, and therefore may need to be constructed by the user of a personal computer. To this end, a user may employ any suitable character construction software tool, such as a graphics program that allows a user to graphically edit existing characters to appear as desired. One example of a character construction software tool is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,852,448, which is incorporated herein by reference.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,603,478, also incorporated herein by reference, describes a system and method that permit the user of a personal computer on a network to access characters stored in a remote database via a server. The system and method further permit the user of a personal computer to construct new characters if a desired character cannot be found in the memory of the personal computer or in the remote database.
When a new character is created in a personal computer, however, another personal computer that receives a document containing the newly created character may not recognize the newly created character for the purpose of proper display. Specifically, display of an Asian font on a computer screen is based on the use of a specific character code, typically an alpha-numeric code, assigned to each character within the font. Examples of character code systems include JIS code, Shift JIS code, Unicode, and ECU code. User activation of a computer input device (e.g., a particular sequence of selected keys on a keyboard) generates a character code that corresponds to a certain character. Thus, by entering a character code using the input device, the user can access and retrieve the corresponding character from the memory of the personal computer or in any alternative or auxiliary memory, and display it on a computer screen. Also, when a personal computer receives a document including Asian characters, as long as the character codes for those characters are registered in the personal computer, the personal computer can properly display the characters.
All standard characters are defined in terms of character codes in any of the exemplary character code systems (JIS, Shift JIS, etc.) and thus many computers, in which these character code systems are registered, can readily share (process or display) these standard characters. When the user of a personal computer constructs a new character, however, the personal computer may assign a new character code to the newly created character and, therefore, the new character code is not readily shared with any other computers. When those computers in which the newly created character is not registered receive a document containing the newly created character, the computers cannot properly display the newly created character.
A need exists for a system and method for centrally managing all new characters created by various user systems (e.g., personal computers) on a network, so as to permit all user systems to readily share the newly created characters.